‘I’ve had three careers, really, and the most important to me was raising my family.’

It’s something of an understatement to call Irene Sherwin a career woman who has also balanced the needs of a family. The 73-year-old Rancho Santa Fe woman is a mother of eight, grandmother of 12, and also has seen life through the eyes of a math teacher, a small business owner and an artist. Although she wasn’t listed in “Who’s Who of American Women” until she was 64, Sherwin still feels her most significant job was the one she started nearly 50 years ago--raising a family. Sherwin was interviewed by Times Staff Writer Leslie Wolf and photographed by Bob Grieser.

I’ve had three careers, really, and the most important to me was raising my family. I’ve had eight children and 12 grandchildren. For 20 consecutive years, I had at least one pre-schooler at home--and I didn’t mind! A lot of people ask whether we’re Catholic or careless, and I say we’re neither.

We started out in a big farmhouse in Illinois, and we’ve been buying smaller and smaller houses ever since. We moved to San Diego in the late ‘60s when my husband took a job as a physicist with General Atomic. This was our 17th move to come here, and we’re not even a military family.

I graduated from college in 1937 with a math degree, and got my teaching credential. Then I got married and tried to go to graduate school at the University of Chicago. The math department was very tough--fortunately I got pregnant, so I didn’t have to go through with it. I never did get to do anything with my degree until I was almost 50. My last child was born when I was 42. Finally, at one point we had four in college and some in elementary school, and I was bored to death.

I taught math for five years. I started out in a public school in Virginia for a year, and lost 20 pounds and almost went berserk. They plopped me into a schedule that must have been set up for an ex-Army sergeant. I could not cope with the discipline problems in the public school at the junior-high level. Then I went to a private Quaker school, where I had maybe one discipline problem a semester, instead of one a week. Now I’m a volunteer at the math lab for first- and second-graders here at the Chaparral Elementary School in Poway.

I’ve seen schools both as a teacher and a parent, and I’d like to reorganize the whole math schedule. It’s not necessary for so many young people to have math. After a certain point, they should take it only if they want to. The logic, the thinking process that math teaches you is very fine, but most people don’t use geometry or calculus the rest of their lives.

I had started weaving about 40 years ago, then the children interfered and I didn’t have much time. I really got back into it in a big way after we moved here. I went to workshops with different weavers. It was very exciting learning to spin on my great-grandmother’s spinning wheel.

My husband encouraged me to get into a career, so I set up a little shop in Rancho Santa Fe called the Black Sheep. We sold all the best yarns, and we taught weaving and spinning and many other fiber arts. We also found out that hand-weaving did not sell very well. My husband used to tease me and say it was the Red Sheep--I never did make any money. I sold the shop to an employee about four years ago--now it’s located in Encinitas and she’s doing very well.

My latest thing is weaving rag rugs out of blue jeans. I have two rugs in the kitchen made of old jeans the kids send me.

Calligraphy is my main interest now--I started eight or nine years ago. I love logos and I’ve looked at them all my life. So I took a beginning class in calligraphy four times, and I’ve taken two intermediate classes. I don’t consider myself a professional, but I do get paid for various jobs. I do things mostly for my friends, and I’ve just recently done a flyer for a young woman who does image consulting. I also do brochures, invitations, menus, things like that. There are many great styles of calligraphy. My favorite is Gothic, but I also like a very free style.

The most important thing to me is that women shouldn’t give up their natural functions in order to have happy lives and careers. I think it’s perfectly feasible to fulfill your natural functions first, and then have your career. I do support very strongly women’s choice, and having equal pay for the same careers as men. But there is a wonderful satisfaction in having children, and the extreme feminists seem to exclude this. The emphasis lately has been for women to get careers first, but it’s very hard to have a family without being a full-time mother. Children need the stability of a home and family.